Ghost in the Shell Prototype
by Motoko Khaotix
Summary: Aria, a female Cyborg Shell made by Section 9 is an attempt to make the ultimate Ghost, they succeed when the shell becomes inhabited by someone who is not only one of the world's greatest soldiers, but someone Motoko falls in love with.


**Ghost in the Shell Prototype**

Chapter I Construct

Aria slowly let out her breath, though she really couldn't figure out whether she actually needed to breath or whether it was just left over from being a natural human. Her finger started to press slightly on the trigger of the M87 Sniper Rifle. The M87 was a robust weapon, high powered and also benefited from a lot of technologies that weren't available to its predecessor the M82 Barrett. Back in the early 21st the M82 was an advanced weapon, could shoot over a mile away and punch through hard surfaces like concrete or even metal such as engine blocks.

But as Aria was quickly learning all things become obsolete, only one factor contributed to that fact, time. The M87 was essentially an upgrade and a hell of upgrade it was. The mass of the rifle nearly doubled in size and fired a slug that could punch through building walls to get to targets inside. Though without the proper types of technology to back it, shooting through walls would be at best like shooting in the dark.

Aria with technology backing her, since the incident when she became what she is, came with it a vast wealth of technology open to her that wasn't there before. Everything from live feeds from other team members that she was watching over, to satellite relay feeds, which at this point she was using to track her target. Though from the top down view from the satellite she couldn't see her target, the thermal imaging managed to do just fine in picking out the targets in the room she was aiming at.

"Aria, how are things on your end?" a woman's voice suddenly broke out over the internal Cyberbrain comm. channel.

"Tracking the target right now Major, when everyone's green we'll go." Aria replied as she adjusted her aim according to where the influx of data streaming in told her where her target was.

"Ok, everyone else got that?" the voice asked. "Saito?"

"I'm ready here too, ready when you all are." Saito answered back.

"On my mark…"

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Batou was ready to move in; once the word came from the Major his team would launch its strike into the room under supporting fire from the sniper team. He was hoping that the rounds the sniper team was firing wouldn't punch through and accidently kill the team but he trusted the skill of Saito and the Major, although he didn't question Aria's shooting they hadn't exactly worked together much before, maybe he had been working with the others so long that he failed to get used to new members of Section 9, though to be honest his feelings were probably shared among other members of Section 9. Not that he didn't trust her just ever since the incident everyone had treated her differently with the exception of the Major.

"Batou green light, move in!" the Major yelled over the comm. channel.

Batou gave his team the signal as they moved forward placing a breaching charge on the door leading into the room that they were entering. Outside he could hear the sniper team unleash their deadly volley. Milliseconds later large holes punched through the wall leaving stains of blood along with them. The men inside didn't even have time to scream as all the rounds found their mark and instantly shredded them to pieces.

Batou wasted no time in setting off the charge and immediately moved into the room, inside were two men armed with small sub machine guns that Batou couldn't recognize. Dazed by the sudden death of their comrades they were desperately trying to recoup. Along with the confusion large plumes of dust from the concrete and dry wall inside kicked up further obstructing their attempts to regain focus.

He raised his C-26 up and quickly fired two short controlled bursts into the two enemies. They dropped quickly as puffs of blood shot into the air. Still ever wary of his surroundings he moved towards a chair in which a man was tied to. The man was gagged and blinded, and looked afraid as he could hear the gunfire and the armed men in the room go down around him.

"Were clear Major," He said over the comm. link. "Target is secure."

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Up in her sniper position Major Motoko Kusanagi witnessed the deadly effect of the sniper team's combined efforts and not to her surprise Batou's swift entry.

"Roger that, get him out of there were extracting the target to a secure zone."

Motoko paused for a moment as she heard something like a vehicle or machine nearby.

"Major?" Batou asked.

"Sorry, I thought I heard some…"

Before she could finish her sentence large caliber bullets riddled the room she was in several just narrowly missing her. She ditched her sniper rifle that was mounted in the office building's window as she dived for what little cover was left. Just seconds from the burst of rounds had shredded the small office she was in to pieces. Outside she could hear the thump of rotor blades belonging to a helicopter hovering in front of the building she was located in. After a brief pause more bullets flooded into the room, blowing away what little office furniture was left and taking huge gaping chunks out of the wall.

Pulling out her C-26 she attempted to fire back at the hovering helicopter and in an all too familiar event she found that her rounds that found their mark simply bounced off the reinforced armored hull of the vehicle. As she pulled back into cover her stomach dropped as she heard the distinct sound of concealed bays containing missile pods whine as they opened. She braced for the shock of the blast when to her surprise instead of hearing the missiles fire off she heard a loud thud like something slamming against metal.

Peeking her head around the corner she saw something she didn't expect at all. Aria situated in a couple office rooms over had leapt from her sniper position in the window and threw herself against the helicopter. The aircraft swung from side to side under the sudden weight distribution. Aria immediately tore something from her back pouch of her light armored suit and slapped it against the side of the helicopter. In one giant push she back flipped away from the helicopter being careful that her feet didn't get caught up in the rotor blades and putting a very abrupt end to her heroic attempt.

Of course now there was the matter of the thirty stories of space between her and the ground. Acting as quick as she possibly could she pulled a compact grapple hook off her belt and fired it into the nearest window she could find. Falling for several more seconds the world around her spun; when she kicked off she didn't fall straight and was now tumbling towards a very unsavory death. She didn't know if her prosthetic body could take the fall, but then again she didn't even want to know. Seconds later her grapple punched through a window shattering the glass, inside the grapple dug into the wall.

A hard yank on her arm was felt as the grapple wire dug deep into her suit and then into her flesh from the sudden stop. The stop even managed to tear some of her flesh away revealing the cybernetic interior of her arm. She bit down and gritted, as to why they didn't remove pain sensors she wondered. As the wire took hold on her arm she looked back up. The helicopter was still swaying from its sudden attack and was failing to correct itself to get another shot at blowing the room the Major was in away. Aria looked at the side of the machine where the explosive she had attached was placed and brought up the internal signal code for the detonation of the explosive.

"Major, keep your head down!" She yelled over the comm. link.

"Already out of the room, blow it!" Motoko replied quickly as she ran out into the safety of the hall of the office building to take cover.

A large thundering sound enveloped the area as the explosion tore into the side of the helicopter blasting shards of metal and pieces of the office building into the air. Though the helicopter was going to crash a large part of it remained intact, the only real damage coming from the flames spouting out and the huge gaping hole in its side, causing the wreckage to spin out instead of fall directly to the ground. Pieces of debris and flames fell down upon Aria who was dangling from her wire, the shattered glass from the building managed to slice her repeatedly causing no serious damage but still hurting her. Along with the debris came the wreckage itself. Aria attempted to swing herself out of the way which she initially succeeded in doing. But on her swing back she realized she was heading directly towards the blades which were digging themselves into the wall at an angle while the bulk of the wreckage bounced her way, effectively tearing off the wall and sending the ruined helicopter directly at her.

She reacted quickly pulling hard on the grapple wire and trying to lay herself completely flat. She barely managed to miss the menacing blades as it passed just inches beneath her taking out yet even more pieces of the building as it spun out. Turning herself around she saw something she didn't anticipate, the ruined remains of the helicopter slammed head long into the room where they had just secured the target.

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Batou watched the miraculous spectacle of Aria throwing herself out of the window and managing to take out the attacking helicopter however, he too watched how everything went wrong as the bulk of it came slamming off the building across from them and hammering itself into the room. Seconds before impact he threw himself out of the room into the hall just in time to avoid being blown to hell by the wreckage, to his amazement he was alright, no damage, nothing, the same however, could not be said for the target.

Batou looked over as a large piece of what was left of one of the rotor blades impaled the man through his chest against the wall. Gasping for breath and with blood pouring profusely in long streams of deep red out of the man's chest and mouth, he attempted to say something but the man only managed to gurgle out more blood before finally giving up and slouching against the blade. They had failed in the mission, a rarity for Section 9. Suddenly a large alarm noise began to wail and his vision started blurring, red and large letters appeared across his vision.

"MISSION FAILED."

Seconds later Batou unplugged himself from the training program, along with him were Major Motoko Kusanagi, Aria, and Saito. Each lying back in chairs with the training devices pulled over their heads obscuring most of their faces. Pulling himself forward out of his own chair he rubbed the nape of his neck for a moment.

"Ah, man that last bit was bullshit!" Batou looked over as Ishikawa who was monitoring them blurted out.

At the same time the Major, Saito and Aria were pulling themselves out of the seats too. Saito looked over to Aria who was still looking a bit scrambled from exiting the program. Although Saito and Batou didn't plug themselves directly into the construct, Aria and the Major did, as supposedly data was being collected on Aria's digital performance. Saito stopped and looked around the dark cramped room looking at all the gnarled and tangled cable lines stretching across of the floor and the many lit up computer screens that were, as he supposed processing data and monitoring vital signs as well as a host of other data. Before returning his attention back to Aria who didn't seem too overjoyed about the outcome.

"Well I don't usually compliment many people but nice work…" Saito told Aria, attempting to make her feel better.

Aria cocked her head as if confused she wasn't used to Saito handing out compliments and so was a bit offset by the comment.

"Only thing is the target went down…" Saito's almost upbeat attitude fell away in a single second.

"Yeah poor bastard too, got impaled, can't imagine that would be a good way to die." Ishikawa said as he leaned back in his chair.

"Yeah and what is a good way to die?" Motoko asked pulling away wires out of her ports on her neck and shifting herself forward in her chair.

"Hey I was just making a point," He shot back.

"So am I."

Motoko looked over at Aria who was still a bit dazed from everything.

"You ok?" She asked Calmly.

Aria paused for a moment.

"Yeah, just a bit unnerving, I've never been plugged into anything before."

"It'll pass it was like that for me too in the beginning you'll get use to it… hopefully."

Aria smiled lightly at her.

"Sound pretty enthused about the hopefully sounding part."

Motoko shot a brief smile back.

"This whole system is screwed." Ishikawa announced loudly.

"Why's that?" Batou asked curiously.

"Well, for starters this system only factors in the bad shit that can happen; I mean not many of us could have seen the consequence of her blowing that heli to hell." Ishikawa leaned back in his seat even further and stretched his arms back over his head. "I mean not really good when the system doesn't play fair. It's like trying to play, say pool with no arms."

"So you're saying the system is biased and not actually giving real world data?" Aria asked, aggravated.

"Exactly," Ishikawa replied as he pointed his index finger at her.

"Well that's not really fair." Batou said.

"Few things ever are I guess." Aria shot back.

There was a moment of silence in the room as everyone nodded and agreed with Aria's statement. Ishikawa pressed in on some keys on his keyboard before the silence was broken again.

"Well gotta hand it to you Aria that was cool, bat shit crazy, but cool." Batou said as he let out a loud laugh.

The entire room joined him.

"Yeah, but since when has our job been anything but that Batou?" Motoko asked, jokingly.

"Got me there."

The room became silent again when they all noticed someone else entering.

"Not perhaps the most ideal way for things to end but, the data at least will have some use."

Chief Daisuke Aramaki strode into the room, his hands clasped together behind his back. He didn't seem mad at the training results but didn't exactly have a smile on his face.

Both Motoko and Aria stood up from their chairs. Aria was unsteady and wobbled a bit but quickly found her footing.

"Chief." They both said in unison.

Both Aria and Motoko paused for a moment and looked at each other before the chief began to speak again.

"As I was saying not ideal, but effective for our current needs"

"Chief isn't a little unfair to be going against a program that's going to end up screwing us anyways?" Batou asked.

"The idea behind this program is not to succeed in your mission but to show you how your actions have consequences and to learn how to react to those consequences." Aramaki replied.

"Yeah well doesn't help much when the target ends up dead, can't really react to that! Besides, this system is too biased and the programming isn't even right, I mean why did Aria get killed during any number of the stunts she pulled?" Ishikawa said as he looked at the Chief.

"Don't you have data to be downloading and sending off to Doctor Kira?" Aramaki told him in an attempt to get him to leave.

Ishikawa mumbled and grunted for a moment then grabbed something out of the computer terminal in front of him.

"Yeah guess Helena will want this data." He held up a memory device. "See how her new machine works."

Aria shook her head for moment before gritting her teeth.

"Uh, scratch that comment, heh." Ishikawa said as he smiled uncomfortably. The room paused for a moment as he left.

Aramaki closed his eyes and shook his head for a moment.

"Well pending that data and some other tests were going to be sending you out into the field, Aria, do you think you can handle that?" Aramaki reopened his eyes and directed his attention towards her.

"Well I'm in the same position you are, pending that data yeah, I should be able to handle, might want to consider some more training, remember I was original before all this, no implants, with the exception of the night before the incident, nothing."

"I understand, you and Motoko will be training together in the mean time, she'll teach what she knows about Ghost Hacking and depending on how well you can cope with that you'll be brought online as an official Class A Hacker."

"A Ghost,"

Aramaki closed his eyes once again and nodded his head.

"Hey least the pay is better, ha." Batou said humorously.

"Hate to be on the other end of either one of you is all I know," Saito said as he rose from his seat and exited the room.

"Alright were done here right?" Batou asked.

Motoko nodded her head signifying it was ok to leave. Motoko guessed that Batou would either go work out or visit the Tachikomas like he normally did when they weren't on mission.

Shortly thereafter everyone else left; Aria made her way back to her room wandering through the halls of the Section 9 building. Though Section 9 members usually had places to go or safe houses outside of Section 9's main operations center, they also had small residential suites for its operatives. She had trouble locating her room, she was so disoriented from the training construct she found it hard to think, knowing what she did about computers she hoped that her highly advanced Cyberbrain wasn't going to fail, or any other number of her prototype prosthetics.

After several minutes of wandering she finally managed to locate her room. She paused at the door and slid her hand across the key pad as it flashed and the door slid open. The Suites that Section 9 members got weren't too bad, not exactly spacious, something more akin to a hotel room, but not as cramped or bland. There was space for computers along with a queen size bed. After entering the semi dark room, the only light coming from her bathroom and the lights shining in from outside her full view window, she walked slowly and exhaustedly over to her bed and fell back onto it, trying to regain some mental clarity. The training program had left her exhausted, not physically but mentally.

The world she had once known was completely changed, to go from a regular human to not just a cyborg, but a machine in a single day seemed so unreal to her. Most people were eased into their implants or even during the Cyberziation process. She on the other hand was given a crash course, which of course had exhausted her and thrown her into her current state.

As she attempted to doze off she was abruptly awoken as she heard the door to her shower slide open. Panicked for a moment and unsure what to do she threw herself up from her lying position. Looking over to bathroom door she was surprised to see Motoko standing in the doorway.

Aria let out a held in breath.

"And why exactly do you need to use my shower?" Aria asked her.

Motoko laughed lightly for a moment.

"Mines broken." She replied slyly.

"Why do I not believe you?"

"Cause you rarely believe anyone?" Motoko shot back.

"Hmm." Was all Aria replied tilting her head and considering the comment.

Motoko calmly folded her towel over herself covering her naked torso before proceeding over to the bed and sitting beside Aria.

"Seriously, why are you here?" Aria asked, more persistent this time.

"Chief and Dr. Kira said for me to keep an eye on you."

"What so like everyone thinks I'm completely different in mental state like I'm not the person I was before?"

"Not everyone thinks that, just the only occasions where we've dealt with something like this in the past hasn't really gone over well. Listen, I don't believe that you are different, you proved that today in the simulator."

Aria looked over at her for a moment.

"Oh? Why cause I was able to destroy something as always." Aria asked coldly. "Yeah that's a sure sign that I'm still who I was."

"No, because you went out of your way to help…" Motoko paused for a moment, looking away briefly then looking back at her. "Out of your way to save me."

Aria shook her head.

"I think you give me more credit then I deserve, you could have handled that situation, I mean you tore off your own arms once trying to defeat a Fuchikoma."

"Yeah that story never gets old, and Batou tells it enough times to make me sick, you know that isn't exactly the moment of my life in which I'd choose to as my most amazing moment." Motoko said as she sighed.

Both women paused for a moment, leaving only the slow sound of the fan from Aria's Suite computer blowing.

"And besides you did things like that all the time before all this happened, and you weren't even full prosthetic, hell you didn't even have anything replaced,"

Aria shook her head more.

"Oh yeah like what?"

"Well for starters you threw a full cyborg that should have been able to overpower you, through a wall." Motoko paused again for a moment "Blew up a rogue Fuchikoma at point blank range, oh and let's not forget the amount of times you've thrown yourself into danger to push us out of the way of things like bullets when technically it would be better for us to take the hits."

Aria clenched her hands.

"Yeah and look where that got me?!"

There was a long silence in the room, Aria closed her eyes trying to shut out the memories. Motoko sighed once more before speaking again.

"In any case I have a lot to teach you about hacking, you have a lot of potential but it's too uncontrolled, you'll probably kill or damage anything you attempt to hack and so I have to teach you how to Ghost Hack right."

"So, that's why you're here." Aria asked, her voice making it sound more like a comment then an actual question.

"Among other reasons."

"Can I just get some rest for now, I'm too exhausted to learn anything."

"Who said anything about learning?" Motoko said as raised her brow and shot Aria a smile.

Aria shook her head again.

"Wouldn't really figure you for that, but, in any case I just want to sleep." Aria got up from the bed and walked over to her bathroom door.

Before shutting the door she turned to Motoko on the bed.

"Thanks, Major, for everything."

Motoko turned away for a moment.

"Don't mention it, I know this is hard, it has been, but hey look at it this way, the tech team has been trying to solve how you were able to do the jump for the last week on end, so you think you have problems…" Motoko paused for a moment, glancing around at the pictures and other things littered around the room when the screensaver on her computer caught her attention. The screensaver was a picture of Section 9's members grouped together for the photo; she looked at it intensely, noticing a man standing next to Motoko. She sighed briefly then spoke." And don't worry some of us remember who you were, and I still do." Motoko said as she turned and smiled.

Aria slowly closed the door to her bathroom and walked over to her sink. Outside she could hear Motoko plop herself back on the bed. Aria began to run water in her sink, after washing her face she pulled her head up to the mid-sized mirror on the wall. After wiping away the steam from Motoko's shower off the smooth glass she looked into her own drained face.

Looking into her azure blue eyes and noticing the strands of wet red hair matted against her face, she just stared. It was all so different before, Aria couldn't even believe it herself. How in the beginning things were so far different from where things stood now, she just wished that just like the construct that she'd wake up and things would all be back to what passed as normal…


End file.
